Wrestle Reviews: WCW vs nWo World Tour

Here is where it all started! This was THQ’s first of four fantastic American wrestling games to be released on the Nintendo 64. This game was released at a time when WCW was just white hot and was the most popular wrestling organisation in America. Many people see this as the first of the series, but truth be told this is actually kind of a sequel or at the very least a spin off from WCW vsThe World on the Playstation.

I am going to try and just talk about this game and not mention its sequels as I think that is the most fair way to do this. At the time this was released I had a Playstation and this was the game that made me decide to get a Nintendo 64. I did so many garbage odd jobs so that I could afford one that it was unreal, but I worked my butt off and after some left over birthday money I had enough. I went to the video game store all excited, but they were sold out of the game. No big deal I thought, I will get the system here and get the game elsewhere. About five stores later I had a Nintendo 64, but no WCW game to play on it.

Presentation

Man this game has really aged horribly, but back in 1997 as far as the graphics go I honestly had no complaints. Neither did any of my friends who were also rabid wrestling fans. Truth be told we were more WWF fans that WCW, but this game had a great amount of ex WWF wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Lex Luger to name a few. The character models looked great at the time. They look like much smoother versions of what WCW vs The World had on the Playstation. Now though when you look at the game you notice that the body parts are sort of just slapped onto the body and it does look kind of weird.

The game has a whole bunch of arenas which is really cool and like in WCW vs The World there are made up wrestlers and fictional wrestling promotions. What is pretty cool is that some of these “fictional” wrestlers are clearly real life Japanese wrestlers just with a made up name. One thing that really sucked though was the lack of authentic WCW theme music. I would love to know the reason why there was no wrestler entrance themes. The game I will fully admit to look at now is very hard on the eyes. But back in 1997 and throughout 1998 the game to me looked fantastic.

Game Play

This is where the game really shines. My friend and I would spend hours playing this game in four player mode. It’s really hard to explain to someone who is not a wrestling fan what actually makes a good wrestling game. But the guys at Yukes who developed this series sure as hell knew what made a great wrestling game. The control was just so great and the amount of moves that each wrestler could do was just insane. But there was a couple of things that bugged me in the moves department like Kevin Nash and Scott Hall not having their real finishing movies. The reason for this was the game just used move sets from Virtual Pro Wrestling which is the Japanese counterpart. This issue would be fixed in the sequels that would follow. Back in the Christmas holidays of 1997 we would pull all nighters playing this game. The great thing about the game was that no two matches ever felt the same.

When looking at it now the game does not have a huge variety of game modes, but back in 1997 this game felt absolutely stacked with game modes. You have a WCW vs nWo tournament thing which was pretty fun to play through, and in addition you have various different championships you can win. There was not a huge amount of match types, but this really did not do the game any harm at all.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the most important wresting games of all time. I guess you could easily make the argument that it is the most important wrestling game of all time. This game set the ground work for what Yukes and THQ would go onto do with the WCW license and then later the WWF license. I actually feel really lucky to have been a gamer when this game was first released and experience it when it was brand new. While the later games in the series are much better this, it’s still a great title to have in your collection.

About JDelacey

Jason, who was raised in Scotland, but currently lives in merry old England, has been gaming for around 25 of his 33 years of life. Started off by the Atari 2600 and the classic ZX Spectrum, Jason has never once lost love for gaming. Jason is a huge wrestling video game fan and wrote a long running history of wrestling video games series. Jason now is responsible for passing on his addiction of video games to his son Logan. Favourite Systems: Super Nintendo, Sega Mega Drive (sorry Genesis for my American friends) Playstation, Nintendo 64, Xbox 360.
Favourite Games: Super Mario World, Star Wars Arcade, Ninja Turles 4, Streets of Rage 2, Sensible Soccer, WWF No Mercy, Wrestlemania The Arcade Game, Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 10, Link To The Past, and Resident Evil 4.